Commenting mainly on France and U.S.policy in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Author of "Web of Deceit, the History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush." Now finishing a novel, "The Watchman's File," delving into Israel's most closely-guarded secret. [It's not the bomb.]

Google+ Badge

Friday, January 25, 2013

NYT
Jan 25, 2013LONDON —
A prominent British human rights lawyer [Ben Emmerson] said on Thursday that aUnited Nations panel he leads would
investigate what he called the “exponential rise” in drone strikes used in
counterterrorist operations, “with a view to determining whether there is a
plausible allegation of unlawful killing….”

“This form of warfare is here to stay, and it
is completely unacceptable to allow the world to drift blindly toward the
precipice without any agreement between states as to the circumstances in which
drone strike targeted killings are lawful, and on the safeguards necessary to
protect civilians.”

Awesome
Engineering Co.

Memo To all Sales Staff:

|

Big News!

The Liquidator, our new unmanned aerial vehicle, is now in full
production. But we’re after far more than the U.S. market. More than seventy
countries already have drones—armed and unarmed. That’s just for starters. Every
self-respecting head of state is going to want his own fleet.

And the Liquidator will be the flavor of the
decade.

It can takeoff,
land and hover for a week without need of a human operator.

And it can't
be fooled. From six miles up, thanks
to our new Awesome Laser Optical Scanner (ALOS), it can zoom in to photograph the
face of anyone below, as well as capture the underlying bone structure, with
amazing resolution.

This
means there is no way the bad guys (or gals) can conceal their identity by
growing beards, dyeing their hair, losing weight, or undergoing radical plastic
surgery.

The next sales
point is also sensational: The Liquidator
can work totally on its own. Its scanner can instantly interface with a
database of all known or suspected bad guys in any intelligence agency’s files, or from the new
global terrorist data base that we offer as an additional service. At the same
time, the ALOS can also assess the area around the target for risk of “collateral damage.” [cd]

Note: for
an extra 1$million per unit, we will equip the Liquidator with a CDR
(collateral damage regulator) that permits the operator to dial in the degree
of cd judged acceptable for any given assignment.

The
operator then has an option. A.
Let the Liquidator run on “auto-kill” . That means that once is
positive confirmation of the bad guy target, and the cd is acceptable, the on-board
missile is automatically fired. Absolutely no time-wasting intervention required
from the operator.

Option B.
Of course, the operator can also make the kill decision himself, if there is,
for instance, the need clearance from higher up the command chain.

Most of
our clients follow the precedent established by President Barrack Obama, who
established his own terrorist kill list. This enables him to wipe out the bad
guys without encumbering legal procedures, yapping congressmen, or public
trials that provide a soapbox and cheap publicity for the “terrorists” or whatever and their hysterical
rants.

We expect
this system to continue spreading worldwide. [In fact, we know of one European
country where the wife of the President gets to have her own kill list; and
another state where the Prime Minister gave kill privileges to his 16 year old
mistress—though
she only gets to have five people on the list at a time.]

As part
of this presentation, we include a new interactive: How the history of the world
would have been totally changed—maybe even ground to a halt--if kings, czars, sheikhs, imams,
tribal chiefs, presidents, and dictators-for-life, had had something like The Liquidator at their disposal in
years gone by.

The Brits,
for example, could have blown to smithereens early on Jomo Kenyatta, No way he
would have survived to become glorified as the founding father of Kenya. Ditto
Robert Mugabe branded as a “terrorist” in what used to be known as Rhodesia. Ditto Michael
Collins of the IRA.

In the
1940’s,
London also could have knocked off a couple of future Israeli Prime Ministers,
Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir , who organized the bloody-minded Irgun
revolt against England, bombing a hotel and murdering British police.

Going
back even earlier, George III could have nipped the Boston Tea Party in the bud;
taken out Paul Revere before he’d even saddled up. Hell, America might still be British.

In the
same way, the French would have dispatched Ben Bella, wiped out the FLN before most
people even knew what FLN stood for, and Algeria would still be French. So,
perhaps, would Vietnam, if they’d targeted Ho Chi Minh when they should have.

And the
Germans, if they’d
had the Liquidator the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
would have been still born, Jean Moulin and the French Resistance would have been turned into road kill. Same thing for
the Soviets: No Hungarian
revolution. No Prague Spring.

Best of all, they’d have shredded Osama Bin
Laden, long before he’d even thought about turning his bearded crazies against
America.

Batista
would have splattered Fidel and Che all over the Sierra Maestra in Cuba.

Same
story for jokers like Geronimo, Zapata, and Pancho Villa.

And Nat
Turner’s
slave rebellion in 1861 in Virginia would also have been instantly squelched: No
need to put him into the history books by publicly hanging the guy, then flaying
and beheading the corpse. The
Liquidator would have accomplished all that, and more--but discretely.

I mean, guys, when you think about it, what
we’re
really offering our clients is a real shot at The End of History.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Within the next few days, France will have deployed some
2,500 troops to Mali. That’s as large a commitment as France made to what
became a profoundly unpopular war in Afghanistan. No one knows how long the
troops will be there, but the price tag will surely be tens if not hundreds of
millions of Euros, this to born by a French economy already in woeful
shape.

The danger is that President Francois Hollande and the French
state, may shortly find themselves in the disastrous situation of the hapless
coyote in the cartoon, Roadrunner, so
intent on chasing his prey that he scurries right over a cliff and suddenly
finds himself flailing in mid air, about to plunge to the desert below.

President Hollande said the menace of a radical Islamic
takeover was so imminent that he had no choice but to intervene—to save not
just Mali, but all of Western Africa, and, the French now imply, Europe as
well.

Strange thing though, despite the supposed urgency of the
situation, France has had precious little luck so far in convincing its
European partners to contribute their own troops to the intervention. Indeed, the
last thing those countries want, after the traumatic experience of Iraq, Libya
and the Afghan crusade, is to become enmeshed in what risks to be an open-ended
conflict, on behalf of an unelected Malian government, against a vague assortment
of ethnic rebels and jihadis in the desert wilds of North Africa. Thus, so far
there have been a lot of pats on the back from France’s allies, offers of
logistic support, intelligence, a few troop transports, drones, but that’s it.

"You say,
'We'll give you nurses and you go get yourselves killed,'" said French
deputy Daniel Cohn-Bendit, railed at his fellow deputies in the European
Parliament. "We [Europe] will only be credible if French soldiers are not
the only ones getting killed."

Actually, it was surprising to learn that France, still considered
a major military power, doesn’t have the capability to transport a couple of thousand
troops and their equipment to North Africa. France even had to rely on an offer
from the Italians (!) for tankers to handle in-flight refueling of French fighter
jets.

Despite the tepid response from France’s allies, French
government spokesman are still reassuring the public that French troops are not
going to play the major combat role in the coming ground battles.

The fact is, that even if they wanted to play a major role,
there are nowhere near enough French boots on the ground. It’s instructive to
speculate on France’s combat strength, using what is known as the “tooth to tail”
ratio, that is, the number of support troops in the rear needed to support each
combat soldier at the front. For the U.S. military that ratio is about three to
one. If we use the same figure for France, that means that out of 2500 French
troops deployed to Mali, probably about 600-700—a thousand at best--would
actually see front-line combat.

And Mali, don’t forget, is twice the size of France, or Afghanistan
or Texas.

The actual down-and-dirty fighting, we are told, is to be
done by troops from West Africa, some of whom have finally begun arriving in
Mali. But all the reports about those contingents indicate a woeful lack of equipment,
morale, and training, particularly in being able to fight a guerrilla war in
the desert reaches of the Sahel.

After months of discussion, this week—in the wake of the
hostage crisis in Algeria-- France’s European allies finally agreed to dispatch
250 troops to help train the Malian army and perhaps other African units.
But—unless the fallout from the Algerian disaster changes things--it’s already
determined that those European trainers are to be non- combatants. They will
not even be advising the Malian soldiers in battle. As one senior EU
official made very clear. “We will not go north. We will stay in the training areas,”

By the way, one thing I can never figure out—whether it be
Mali or Afghanistan--we‘re always hearing about how the forces being backed by
the U.S. and its allies, like France in this case, invariably seem to be poorly
trained and equipped and demoralized, despite hundreds of millions of dollars
and years of training. [Think Afghanistan where only one out of 23 battalions
is able to function independently of U.S. support.]

Meanwhile, the ragtag rebels they’re combating, usually from
those same third world countries, like the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Touaregs
in Mali are portrayed as dedicated, fierce, battle-hardened warriors, who wreak
havoc on their opponents with often the most primitive improvised weapons or
suicide bombs. Reports are that it will take many weeks, probably months,
before the various African troops will be ready to do any serious fighting. And
there are other problems to deal with apart from training and equipment: the
danger, for instance, of unleashing Christian soldiers from Nigeria to suppress
Islamic rebels in Northern Mali.

Ironically, as I’ve pointed out in a previous blog, while France’s allies are
hanging back, the Chinese, who have huge economic interests and construction projects
underway in every one of Mali’s neighbors, continue to go about their business,
apparently still content to leave the police work to France and Europe and the
West African states.

The French, for the record, insist that the groups they are battling
in Mali –and now in Algeria--are all lumped together as “terrorists”, linked to
al-Qaeda. There is no recognition of the fact that most of the different rebel
groups, most of them driven by strong ethnic and nationalist aspirations, as
much as by religion--not that different perhaps, from the Taliban in
Afghanistan.

In that case, it’s obvious that the only way this conflict
will ultimately be settled is not by somehow eradicating the “terrorists” ,but
by sitting down to negotiate a deal, as will probably be the case in
Afghanistan.

In Mali, such a deal may be not be that different from the
kind of settlement that was offered
the Touaregs years ago after a series of rebellions, but which the Malian
government ultimately reneged on.

So, how do the French feel about this?

Estimates are that anywhere from 400,000 to one million
French took to the streets of Paris last weekend. A counter-protest, expected
to draw hundreds of thousands of other militant French, is now being organized.
Tempers are flaring.

What’s the issue?

Mali?

Well, actually, no. It’s whether the French government
should legalize gay marriage.

As for the intervention in Mali, at first the French, from
all ends of the political spectrum, seemed to be solidly behind their
government and their fighting men.

That consensus is already unraveling, and it’s certain that
as the intervention drags on, the casualties and costs mount, and France’s European
allies still drag their heels, the patriotic surge will flag

Which bring us back to the Roadrunner. Atsome point the French may suddenly look
down to find to their president has taken them over a precipice, and they’re
suspended there, gazing in horror at the chasm below.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

With hundreds of French
troops in Mali, and hundreds more headed that way, the U.S. among other
countries, has also pledged some limited support: intelligence, communication, logistics,
unarmed drones. But Washington obviously would like to keep a low profile. Washington,
in fact, had been militating against just such a move, fearing that another
Western intervention in an Arab land would provide another ideal recruiting
target for erstwhile jihadis across the Muslim world, not to mention to
provoking a spate of terrorist attacks in Europe.

In fact, though, it turns
out that the U.S. has already played a major role in the crisis. It’s a
devastating lesson of plans gone awry, another dreary footnote to the law of unintended
consequences.

According to an
excellent New
York Times account, for the past several years, the United States has
spent more than half a billion dollars in West Africa to counter the threat of
radical Islam, America’s “most ambitious counterterrorism program ever across these vast,
turbulent stretches of the Sahara.”

The aim of the program was that, rather than
rely on the U.S. and its allies to combat Islamic terrorism in the region, the
United States would train African troops to deal with the threat themselves.

To that end, for five years U.S. Special
Forces trained Malian troops in a host of vital combat and counterterrorism
skills. The outcome was considered by the Pentagon to be exemplary

But all that collapsed as the result of another
unintended consequence-- of the French-led intervention in Libya. After the
fall of Khadhaffi, droves of battle-hardened, well-armed Islamic fighters and
Tuareg tribesmen, who had been fighting in Libya, swarmed into Northern Mali.

Joined by other more radical Islamist forces,
some linked to Al Qaeda, they had no trouble defeating the Malian army.

Why? Because of the defection to the rebels of
several key Malian officers, who had been trained by the Americans. Turns out that those officers, who were
supposed to battle the rebels, were ethnic Tuaregs, the same nomads who were part
of the rebellion.

According to the Times, The Tuareg commanders
of three of the four Malian units in the north, at the height of the battle, decided
to join the insurrection, taking weapons, valuable equipment and their American
training with them. They were followed by about 1600 additional army defectors,
demolishing the government’s hope of resisting the rebel attack.

In other words, it’s very
likely that the French and their allies-to-come in Mali will be battling rebel troops
trained by the U.S. Special Forces.

Caught totally by surprise by the whole ghastly mess, the American
officials involved with the training program were reportedly flabbergasted.

There are obvious questions:
How was it possible for the Special Forces and their Pentagon bosses and the
CIA to have had such a total lack of understanding of the Malian officers they’d
trained and the country they’d been operating in for over five years?

But you
could ask that same question about U.S. military actions in any number of
countries over the past few decades, from Lebanon to Iraq to Afghanistan, where
the most apt comparison might be
to releasing elephants into a porcelain shop.

Which leads to a more
fundamental question: how is the U.S. to avoid similar catastrophic mistakes down
the road? The Pentagon has recently announced that some 3,000 troops, no longer
needed in Afghanistan, have been reassigned to work with the local military in 35
countries across Africa--to deal with the threat of Al Qaeda-linked terrorism.

Sounds just like what was
going on in Mali.

But does anyone really think
the U.S. and its military will have a better understanding of the myriad
forces, tribes, religions, governments, legal and illicit financial interests
struggling for power and influence in those countries than it did in Mali?

Or in Iraq, Or Afghanistan
or Iran or Somalia or Lebanon, or Vietnam or Cambodia.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Very reluctantly, we are told, President Francois Holland was
forced to order French troops to intervene in Mali, a former West African
colony. There was no other way to ward off disaster, to prevent yet another
failed African state from becoming a haven for terrorists linked to Al Qaeda.
France had strong cultural, economic and military links to the region that
couldn’t be ignored.

The risks of France’s vague, open-ended venture—which the
U.S. has already indicated it will support--are already being debated. But what
I find particularly ironic is that the country that has probably most to gain from
the intervention--is China.

Why?

Because, by thwarting the rebels’ drive, France and its
partners-to-be will be preserving the security not only of Mali’s rickety
regime, but of Mali’s neighbors as well, also former French colonies, none of
which can make a serious claim to stability.

But in every one of those countries, China does big business—in
several of them, very big business.

--In Niger,
for instance, where France has a program of military cooperation, a Chinese
company operates what is China’s largest uranium mine, at Azelik—breaking what
was a defacto monopoly on Niger’s
reserves once enjoyed by France.

China also runs a major oilfield and has signed a deal to
upgrade the country’s power supplies.

--In
Chad,
where per capital income is about $900 per year, the French have a large airforce base that is being used for their
offensive in Mali. The Chinese have a different kind of operation: their
national petroleum corporation is backing a $1 billion dollar project, to lay 300
kilometers of pipelines from oilfields in Southern Chad to a Chinese-built
refinery near the capital, Ndjamena. The refinery is jointly owned by China and
Chad. China is also building a new international airport nearby.

- The Ivory
Coast, once a jewel of the French colonial crown, also has a French
military base, and lots of French business interests. But just two days before President
Holland intervened in Mali, it was announced in Abidjan, that China and the
Ivory Coast had agreed on a massive $500 million low-interest loan from China’s
Export Import bank—to finance the construction of a hydropower station-- by a Chinese
engineering firm--that will be the largest in the country and will export power
to neighboring countries.

China
is also drilling for oil in the Cameroon, building an airport and port in
Mauritania, importing cotton from Burkina Faso, making huge deals for iron ore
in Guinea and Sierra Leone, while building schools, hospitals, stadiums, not to
mention railway lines all over the continent.

So why is China willing to make such massive gambles in a
part of the world where governments seem to change from week to week, and huge
countries like Mali, which used to be considered one of West Africa’s most
stable regimes, can disintegrate into chaos almost overnight?

Part of it is that China, to fuel its soaring economy, is
willing to get along with just about anyone in power. They’re not out to
organize coups, overthrow regimes or impose their views.

And in much of West Africa, at least, they’ve probably been bolstered
by the thought that, when the chips were down, highly trained and equipped
French and American troops would help keep chaos at bay. Indeed, the Pentagon is
building small, discrete bases—known as lily-pads--across the continent, and
has also assigned more than three American thousand troops to work with and
train African solders to deal with “terrorist” threats, like the one that’s
just exploded in Mali.

If the presence of those foreign troops ultimately rubs the
native population the wrong way, due to anything from cultural differences to
civilian deaths in collateral damage, it’s the French and/or Americans and
their African military allies who will have to take the heat.

Without any of their own boots on the ground, without helicopter
gun ships or drones in the air, and not a single base outside of China, it won’t
be the Chinese.

That’s how it’s been in many other parts of the world,
particularly the Middle East: the Chinese have had a free ride, with the U.S.
and its allies patrolling key trade routes, intervening in the name of
political stability.

At least, that’s the way it was. But with the French and
other NATO countries more reluctant to intervene than ever, and with the U.S.
military facing major budget cuts, the day will soon come when China will have
to pick to pick up its own security tab, protect its own trade routes, become
at least one of the cops on the global beat.

China’s leaders may know that. Which is part of the reason
for their on-going military build up, particularly the navy. They’ve already
made a deal to train Afghan soldiers, for instance, now that the U.S. is
pulling out.

@barrylando

About Me

Originally from Vancouver, studied at Harvard, Harvard Law and Columbia University, then correspondent for Time Life in South America, and 30 years as Producer with 60 Minutes in Washington D.C. and Paris, where I now live. Wrote book on history of Western Invervention in Iraq, Web of Deceit, now writing a novel, painting, travelling, visiting friends and relatives.